Home Gad­gets

Get spring-clean­ing with a smart vac­uum

1 The very first edi­tion of Ap­ple Home (see MF296) looked at the money-sav­ing po­ten­tial of smart ther­mostats. We talked to Momit back then, but the Span­ish com­pany has only re­cently started sell­ing its of­fer­ings in the UK.

You can be­gin at quite mod­est cost with Momit’s Home Ther­mo­stat Starter Kit. At just £99, it’s one of the most af­ford­able smart heat­ing kits we’ve seen so far. Its Wi-Fi con­nec­tiv­ity lets you con­trol the ther­mo­stat us­ing the Momit app on your iPhone or iPad. This in­cludes quick on/off con­trols, as well as sched­ul­ing op­tions so you can ad­just your home’s heat­ing to suit your daily rou­tine.

The Home Ther­mo­stat also in­cludes a ‘pres­ence sen­sor’ that can au­to­mat­i­cally turn off the heat­ing if it can’t de­tect any­one mov­ing around your home. When you’re out and about, the ‘ge­olo­ca­tion’ fea­ture can track the GPS lo­ca­tion of your phone to fol­low your move­ments and turn on the heat­ing when it sees that you’re head­ing home.

Make it even smarter

The Home Ther­mo­stat is avail­able in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent colours to suit your home decor, and once you’ve in­stalled the starter kit you can buy ad­di­tional ther­mostats for £59 each to con­trol the heat­ing in spe­cific rooms, or on sep­a­rate floors of your home. There’s also an op­tional ex­ten­sion kit (£29) that al­lows you to take the ther­mo­stat con­trol off the wall and put it in your bed­room or lounge for ex­tra con­ve­nience.

The com­pany also makes a sec­ond model, called the Smart Ther­mo­stat, which costs £149. This ver­sion has the same fea­tures as the Home Ther­mo­stat, and adds a colour LCD with touch­screen con­trols and a num­ber of dif­fer­ent dis­play op­tions. The Smart Ther­mo­stat also in­cludes an am­bi­ent light sen­sor, which helps it to tell when you’ve turned the lights off and gone to bed at night. Un­like the Home Ther­mo­stat, which re­quires the gate­way that’s part of the Starter Kit in or­der to join your net­work, this model can con­nect over Wi-Fi on its own.

Momit says its ther­mostats are com­pat­i­ble with most do­mes­tic heat­ing sys­tems, and that you can in­stall them for your­self in less than half an hour. How­ever, if you’re a bit wor­ried about fid­dling with wiring, it can send an en­gi­neer to in­stall the kit for an­other £79.

The Home Ther­mo­stat can turn off the heat­ing if it doesn’t de­tect any­one mov­ing in your home

The Home Ther­mo­stat dis­plays ba­sic sta­tus, while the iOS app shows us­age stats that can help you save money.